wedding plus one problems

Jake in London concurs with Olly’s advice in the last episode about the lineup in wedding photos:

Following the discussions in AMT316 about having couples in the official wedding photos who broke up shortly after, I thought I’d share the now comical story of the latter happening at my dad’s wedding a few years ago.

At the wedding me and my brother were asked to be joint best men, which we were pretty pleased with. Our girlfriends were also invited along: I will point out here that whilst me and my partner had been together for several years (and still are), my brother and his girlfriend had only been together a couple of months.

As they have loads of photos taken on the day, me and my brother were naturally in the majority of them. Some of the nicest ones were taken right outside the wedding venue, with my dad and his wife, me and my girlfriend and my brother and his girlfriend. As my brother’s girlfriend was the smallest person in this group of six she was naturally placed front and centre, she was also placed front and centre in all photographs she was in on the day – fucking loads!!!

Within a couple days of the wedding, my dad and his wife had decided on the photos that they liked the best and that they were going to get enlarged portraits of, the biggest of which being one of the photos of the six of us. In the time in between them ordering this blowup and getting it back, my brother and his girlfriend split up. As she was front and centre there was no way of cropping her out and there were no photos of just the 4 or 5 of us. As a result, the massive canvas print hangs proudly on my dads sitting room wall, with all six of us smiling out.

The final irony of this is that my brother has subsequently been in a long-term relationship for the past few years, and his new girlfriend has regularly frequented my dad’s house, meaning she’s always greeted with the smiling face of his ex-girlfriend eyeballing her in the sitting room.

The lesson is, if you are going to have people’s new partners come to your wedding, make sure they’re on the fringes of the photographs and not front and centre.

Also on the wedding tip, an anonymous lady from London writes:

I was just listening to AMT316 and I feel compelled to provide an alternative view on behalf of myself and other ‘expensive randoms’ who plague the existence of listeners like Elizabeth.

I am facing a summer of successive weddings with my boyfriend and I have barely met ANY of the couples whose nuptials I have been invited to celebrate. I do appreciate being thought of, but I haven’t really been given the option to turn the invites down (one of them my mother-out-law RSPVed to on my behalf before I was given the invitation, which doesn’t even have my last name on it because neither of the marriers knows who I am).

So answer me this: what can I do to entertain myself in a hotel in the middle of nowhere all day before I am required to turn up at these numerous receptions at 8pm (after my boyfriend and everyone else involved has spent all day drinking)?

Readers, can you go to the comments and give her some suggestions? Try to come up with something more ingenious than ‘masturbation’, ‘minibar’ and ‘reruns of Columbo‘, even though those are all decent ways to while away her time.

2 Responses to “wedding plus one problems”

Is it just me or have people not thought of having some pictures just of the wedding party without the plus ones? When at my boyfriend’s (of nearly a year) best friends wedding they had pictures done of just the bridesmaids and grooms men without their respective partners in. I didn’t feel left out. Also you could easily have an immediate family picture (blood ties only) along with an all family (wives & girlfriends etc.) like with families with separated parents you have pics with both parents, both parents and their partners, and the parents individually. that way no one is hurt and you Don’t have to worry about hurting peoples feelings. Every one gets a picture and you just have to remember to take out the right picture for whoever is visiting!

I think the anonymous lady form London should work out all the different photo combinations that would be necessary for a wedding with two broken homes and with siblings that have parters that are married, together for a while, and new partners. Or she could brush up on some Photoshop skills?

If it were me, I’d use the opportunity to write, or do something else I don’t really get time for in a normal day. A hotel in the middle of nowhere is probably quiet so you can get a bit of something done. At least if you did this, you’d feel productive and not as though you’d wasted the time.

That said, what I am more interested in here is how often Jamie from London used the accusative case (‘x and me’) when it should have been the nominative (‘x and I’), and how Helen feels about that.